NHS Long-term Workforce Plan

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Markham (Con)]

That is absolutely my understanding. For it to be a living document, people clearly need to have input and to be able to debate it in exactly the way we are doing here today.

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House of my membership of the GMC Council. The GMC has warmly welcomed the plan and its role in the expansion of medical education, the development of physician and anaesthesia associates, and the apprenticeship programme. I want to follow on from the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. The key point the GMC has made is that it is absolutely essential that there are sufficient clinical and educational supervisors, particularly for the F1 grade—newly qualified doctors going into postgraduate training. NHS trusts will have to release more of their doctors to provide this. Is the department in touch with and talking to the chief executives of NHS trusts to ensure that, as the pipeline develops, there will be sufficient clinical supervision? This is essential in order to get the quality of doctors that we need.

[Lord Markham (Con)]

The noble Lord is correct that it is essential. I emphasise that this is an NHS document, and the whole point is that it does not look to go “zoom” on recruitment. There is absolutely the understanding that this is a pipeline that has to be built brick by brick. There is no point front-loading the number of university places if, as the noble Lord mentions, there is no follow-up behind it in clinicians. The plan has been developed from the bottom up, including with clinicians and the trusts. There is an understanding that they need to build their own part of the pipeline towards this as well.